Label: Mistralph0ne – MIST001 Format: Vinyl, LP Country: France Released: 6 Mar 2026 Genre: Folk, World, & Country Style: Appalachian Music
Traditions and time collide on new solo venture by Alabama-born, Marseille based musician and Les Disques Omnison alumni Turner Williams JR via his freshly coined Mistralph0ne label.
How do you pay respects to the past without becoming a pastiche? Is music an expression of place and time? Deep questions, but listening to this new self-release from Turner Williams JR, the answers may start to come into focus. It’s one of those rare encounters with new music where you can clearly the hear ghosts of the past being carried into the future, yet with an entirely new voice. Turner’s Alabama roots imbrue Vipérine with the rich Appalachian music traditions, further compounded with his instrument of choice, the Indian shahi baaja zither, which nods South Asian musical influence felt by Basho / Bull / Fahey. He manages to stretch and shape the fragile zither notes into a wide variety of textures, from pensive finger-picking to fragile, crystalline melodics and hallucinatory delay-drenched motifs. Now based in France and open to the deep legacy of Celtic music, echoes of hurdy-gurdy maestro Rémy Couvez, René Aubry and Pierre Jean Croset and his time-dilating harmonic lyre glisten in the background. It’s exciting to see how future experiences will filter into Turner’s music, but for now we have seven individual landscapes to bask in an explore. (Mint / New - paste-on, wrap around cover - 1 per person pls!)
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Much awaited return of Turner Williams Jr. and his Shahi baaja after the celebrated 2023 “Ensoleillée” LP on Les Disques Omnison! More dense and pastoral than on “Ensoleillée”, Williams Jr’s arrangements hints at the Arcadian explorations of Virignia Astley, Ernest Hood PCO, or more recently, Flaer. Self-released and splendid :’)
“music unfolds at a crossroads, where ancient and modern traditions intersect and attract each other. We hear American Primitive Guitar (Robbie Basho, John Fahey, Sandy Bull), the trance of Indian ragas, melancholy of Celtic ballads, the most experimental side of French folk revival (René Zosso, Rémy Couvez, Pierre-Jean Croset, Valentin Clastrier), while allowing the memory of even more ancient music to filter through. He reinvents these roots as he progresses through the years, a gesture inscribed in a singular path, a minimal impressionism crisscrossed by folk influence, following his scene peers Lise Barkas, Megabasse, Clément Vercelletto, Memotone…
Tracklist A1 Jonquille A2 St Loup A3 Sauterelle A4 Blueweed B1 Fauve B2 Rose Des Vents B3 Vipérine
